 I am making this video today for one reason and one reason only is because I want this drama to stop this person. Hey kid. No, not the cat. Yeah, you. Have you ever wondered why you spend hours of your limited time on this planet following YouTube drama rather than doing something more productive? Well, great news. In this video, we're going to explain why you and everyone else does this using some evolutionary psychology. What is up, everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul, where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. And if you're new to my channel, you are in for a treat. So I had a great response from the video I did yesterday about how Jeffree Star manipulates drama channels. I dove into evolutionary psychology and we're going to do a little bit more of that today. So if you're into that stuff, if you like to learn how the human mind works, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. And if you're not yet, make sure you follow me over on Instagram and Twitter at the Rewired Soul. All right. So what was I doing? What was I doing this beautiful Sunday afternoon right before making this video? Well, right before this, I was watching the 25 minute long D'Angelo Wallace video about what's going on between him and Turkey Tom and a bunch of other people in the commentary community. Yesterday, like the video I made on, you know, Jeffree Star and the drama channels, I just watched 30 minutes of Ashley Kyle talking about Jeffree Star and Rich Lux, right? I think there's somebody like Trisha Paytas, right, where I've watched this video. Her name is Gabiana. And look, here's the thing. First and foremost, yes. She's a freaking drama queen. I'm a freaking drama queen. So I'm going to just put this out there and tell it might be an issue with her because I keep texting her telling me to leave me alone that I literally never think about her. And she literally responded, you talk about me all the time. I don't think about her ever. Or this video. I just like to make things awkward. We get a nice little thing to talk about on the podcast. But I don't know how getting dis- You like making things awkward. What did I do? Like, literally, what did I do to you? Don't say it because I disrespected one of your friends. Are you fucking kidding me? Your fucking friends is the reason I was in a mental hospital. Or this video. I always, people always think like there's something wrong with me because I don't have like that many girlfriends. Like, I love girls. Like, I do love girls and I love like, I love like their sensitivity and all that stuff like that. But that's why I identify more as like a gay man because I like guys, but I also identify as a guy. And you're probably in the same boat as me. Like, we sit here and you might wonder sometimes like, how much time have we dedicated to learning about other people's lives? Like, I have a job. I have this amazing little son. I have my beautiful girlfriend Tristan. We got cats. I got so many things going on. So why am I dedicating any time towards this? Well, if you've ever asked yourself that, there's actually a really good explanation for this. All right. And it's based on evolutionary psychology. So the first person I'm going to be talking about is Jonathan Haidt. All right. This dude is a social psychologist. One of my favorite, favorite dudes. He has amazing books out there. He's written a few books, but two of my favorites are The Righteous Mind as well as The Coddling of the American Mind. So in one of his books, I think it was The Righteous Mind. He explains why we gossip. Like, why do we gossip? So the first thing you have to understand, when we're talking about evolutionary psychology, when we're talking about anything with evolution, it's completely based on why we do what we do in order to survive. All right. So it helps you look at these different subjects through a very specific lens. You know what I mean? Like, why do we gossip? How does that help us survive? Why do we still do this thing? So those of you who watched my video yesterday, you learned a little bit about group cooperation and what happens when you don't cooperate. So the reason why we do good things for other people is to promote cooperation, right? Because people back in the day, if they didn't cooperate, boop, they got booted out of the tribe, baby girl. Well, how the hell do you know who to boot out of the group? That's right. If you guessed gossip, you get an extra three points for this video. We evolved to share information about other people. This is how we knew who should be in our group or not in our group. So back in those tribal days, if there was somebody going around stealing things or doing something shady, like sleeping with that caveman's wife or something like that, people would share that information so you knew whether or not to trust that person, right? So how does the body evolve to help us continue to do this? Here's how. We get a good feeling from it, all right? So any of you who have taken a psychology class, you have probably learned about people like B.F. Skinner or Pavlov and his experiments, right? You know, about priming and conditioning and all that kind of stuff. But basically our minds evolved in this certain way so we get positive rewards, all right? So have you ever gotten some like information about somebody and you get all excited? You're like, oh, I can't wait to tell my girlfriend about this, all right? We evolved this way because it feels good to share that information because it used to help us out so long ago back in the day. And it also feels good when we receive that information. That is one of the reasons why we sit here and just watch these videos about what's going on in the YouTube community. So now that we know that Gossip isn't going anywhere because it's literally built into our DNA, we need to talk about what the potential problems are, all right? So right now I'm currently just like, I'm in the last chapter on finishing this book called The Knowledge Illusion. And I cannot recommend this book enough. Like it is just such a phenomenal book. But anyways, I'm going to talk about something very specific that they talked about in one of the recent chapters that I finished. And it's explanation fiends and explanation foes, all right? So ask yourself, are you an explanation fiend or an explanation foe? An explanation fiend is somebody who just loves, loves, loves, loves getting all of the information about stuff, right? How does this thing work? How did this happen, right? All the research, and then there's explanation foes, okay? They're the people who are like, listen, just give me the cliffs notes because I got stuff to do, all right? So they've done studies on this to find out if people are explanation fiends or explanation foes. So about 80% of people are actually explanation foes, all right? They would rather just get the cliffs notes, okay? But they've done other studies. So like one of the studies that they did was really interesting was they asked people about, you know, how likely they were to buy this Band-Aid, all right? And they gave three different explanations for the Band-Aid. The first one was this Band-Aid comes with bubbles. These bubbles help you heal faster, all right? That was explanation number one. Explanation number two was, hey, this Band-Aid comes with bubbles. So it keeps moisture out, which helps you heal faster. All right? That was explanation number two. Explanation number three. It was like, hey, this Band-Aid has bubbles, which keeps moisture out. And then it dove into all this stuff that I legit cannot remember, but I started talking about bacteria and how air interacts with bacteria and moisture and all sorts of stuff, right? But anyways, they asked people which one they were most likely to buy based on the information given. And most people, most people picked option number two, all right? It's a little like Goldilocks and Three Bears action, okay? Not too little information, but not too much information. Like give me just a little bit of information, explain to me why this works so much better, and I'll get that one. All right? So like I said, approximately 80% of people are explanation foes, and 20% are explanation fiends. So which one's better? Is it better to be a fiend or a foe? The reality is it doesn't matter, all right? There's pros and cons to both of them, okay? So like I said, the majority of people are explanation foes. What are the issues with this? What are the potential issues? There's a lot of them, but something I can think of off the top of my head is that you really have to trust the source of information, all right? You have to hope that that person isn't giving you inaccurate information, that they're not giving you untruthful information, but then what are the issues with being an explanation fiend, all right? You want to research and investigate everything, all right? That is not efficient, okay? Like if you want to dive into every single thing and learn all the ins and outs and intricacies and learn how it works and all the information and do all the research, like it's going to be hard to live a productive life because you're going to spend all your time researching stuff, all right? So something that the book, The Knowledge Illusion talks about is just group knowledge. Like they've done some studies, I believe the woman's name was Ann Brown, right? But some of the best projects that came together was when each person has a specific section to research and then bringing it all together. And that's actually how a lot of the biggest scientific breakthroughs have actually happened in the world. But now that we know a little bit about the psychology behind this stuff, is it any wonder that drama channels or commentary channels have hundreds of thousands, if not millions of subscribers? We have this biological need to know about other people and the majority of us don't really want to do our own research, all right? The drama channels, the commentary channels, they do that research for us and then we consume it. All right? So the biggest question is, is this a problem? Eh, depends on how you look at it. Like I said, like if you are an explanation foe, you're going to have to really rely on, you know, the source and hope that it is, you know, truthful, that it is well researched and everything like that. So like me personally, it depends on the subject. It really does. Like I am, you know, I lean a little bit more towards explanation fiend, even though like they had a test in the book, the knowledge illusion, but I'd probably be classified as explanation foe. But like when it comes to like, you know, mental health topics, psychology, things like that philosophy, I dive really far into it. And a lot of us will be an explanation fiend for something that we're actually interested in. Right? It's almost like when you major in something with college, in college, you dive really deep into that subject. You know what I mean? But when it comes to like things like, you know, politics and stuff like that, I try to do my own research, right? Because something else that we have to realize is like anybody who tells you that they're giving you their objective point of view is a damn liar. Like this is why scientists have peer reviewed studies and there's so much good stuff in the knowledge illusion about that. But we have our own biases and a lot of times we don't even recognize it. So when I see a politician or somebody, you know, fighting for something that they want, it's like, okay, why? Right? Like are they receiving any money from that industry? The other thing I think I mentioned yesterday in my other video was when it comes to doctors prescribing medications, they might be prescribing you the best medication out there, but they might have a bias based on reciprocity and that's something that we talked about in the last video. You know what I mean? So when it comes to drama channels and commentary channels, the rule of thumb that I use is for my own opinion, just for my own opinion on it. You know what I'm saying? Like I try to see like, okay, like how much does this matter to me? Because a lot of times when we're judging people about who they are, how they are, should they be in the group or out of the group? You know what I mean? A lot of that is based on our very specific morals and values. So I ask myself, what are the important things to me? And now I'll make decisions based on that. You know what I mean? But I gather the information. A lot of times from what, you know, these other channels are making videos about or just what I see and the information that I gather. All right? But anyways, I hope you enjoyed this video and you learned a little bit more about the psychology. But as to why we spend so much time watching and learning about all this stuff going on that has literally nothing to do with us. All right? Anyways, if you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. And a huge, huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on Patreon as well as everybody who supports the channel by buying my mental health books at the rewiredsoul.com and everybody who gets rewired soul merch like this shirt right here. We got hoodies and pullovers and everything like that. It's wintertime. Go get you some merch, baby girl. All right? Thanks again for watching. I'll see you next time.